Yesterday we learned that Randy’s grandpa had a minor stroke on Thursday. He’s got out of the hospital last night and is doing okay, so we picked him up and took him to lunch today. It was a fitting activity for our anniversary, not only because Grandpa has been great to us throughout our marriage but also because he was married for dozens of years to his childhood sweetheart. He is still so in love with her, a decade since her passing, that he keeps her photo on top of a tall armour, pushed out of sight most of the time because the sight of her still makes him miss her more than he can stand. Every time we’re with him, he tells a loving, adoring story about her and reminds us of how funny and charming she was. I didn’t know Randy’s grandparents as a couple very well – I only met his grandmother once or twice – but from what I know of their relationship, I would consider us beyond lucky if we have a marriage anything like theirs. I think we’re well on our way.

Friday night my sister, Kelli and I both let ourselves be humiliated by a video game. Our husbands were both out doing other things so we hung out at her house and ate apple pie a la mode and then cracked open her brand new Wii Fit, a video game invented to lower my self esteem another couple notches. It calculated our Body Mass Index’s and then pinpointed on a continuum how far outside of healthy we we are and asked us to make weight loss goals. We took a break and went into the kitchen to bake some Nestle Brownie Bites and complain about how our characters on the game are bursting out of their clothes, their bellies peeking out to illustrate just how much weight Nintindo thinks we need to loose.

This isn’t the first time we’ve begun weight-loss schemes together. Once we almost made it to a Jazzercise class before chickening out while sitting in my car in the parking lot watching the other women go inside. Another time we went on a diet together and instituted Free For All Sundays – because we weighed in Sunday mornings and we figured any damage we did the rest of the day could likely be corrected during the week. All in all, our weight-loss efforts were usually surprisingly effective, though not long lived. We both have our vices that eventually crept up and seduced us away from our health goals, though they are almost always different. She’s a chocolate fudge kind of girl, and I’m peanut butter all the way.

And as far as differences go, fudge preference is just the tip of the ice burg. Growing up we drove our mom crazy at times because it never failed – if Kelli wanted to do one thing, Kim wanted to do the exact opposite. She wanted to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at the EXACT same time slot as reruns of the Cosby Show, which I preferred. She wanted to stay inside and read all summer whereas I was almost in physical pain anytime I was not at the neighborhood pool. Kelli loved barbies and everything that went along with them. My entire inventory of barbie related merchandise ever was a Tropical Barbie and Ken which remained in their bathing suits the entire time I owned them because I never played with them enough to even change their clothes. After a year or two of Barbie ownership I saw an entrepreneurial opportunity in my Mom’s upcoming garage sale and made out price tags of $2 a piece for them. The impending loss of a member of our Barbie family weighed heavily on Kelli (she’s a keeper, I’m a pitcher) so she said she’d just keep them. And she was dismayed when I told her that she could have them if she forked over the $4. She did.

Now, in the Post Barbie Era of our lives we are still night and day. She is Dancing with the Stars and I am Dirty Jobs, she is fiction and I am non-fiction, she is chain restaurant and I am neighborhood cafe. She is Christmas music in July and I am strictly against that. She is Vera Bradley clad and I am a mishmash of handmade. She likes cds and I am iPod only. She is bubbly and exuberant and I am often accused of looking mad when I’m not.

But for people who have so little in common, we have managed to bank lots of good memories together, even as adults. She makes me laugh a lot and I still like to boss her around a little. She’s my favorite person to go on rambling mini-adventures with and she’s always up for something new and fun. Its easy to emphasize our differences, but much as we may not like to admit it, there are a lot of similarities there too – I mean, for starters we’re both big nerds…..

Kelli at 3 years old. I embroidered her portrait as a birthday gift this past April.

Thursday was Randy’s birthday (mine is not until next Thursday so for this week each year he is robbing the cradle). Since he’s the coolest guy I know, I thought I’d put together a list in his honor: please enjoy “Ten Fun Facts about Randy”.

1. Randy’s mom recalls a time when he was 6 or 7 and had been playing on his own upstairs for a while when she noticed that he was unusually quiet. She stopped to listen for him and right then she heard him let out a primal shriek of joy followed by the patter of running footsteps and then more silence. Later that day she found an empty can of chocolate frosting, licked clean, under the dining room table.

2. Randy was obsessed with the idea of becoming a movie director as a child and lobbied for his parents to buy him a VHS video camera when they were first becoming mainstream. They did and he spent many hours working on elaborate film projects.

3. Randy’s high school job was lifeguarding at a local hotel. Sounds like a dangerous job for a red-head!

4. On Valentines day during our senior year in high school (when we were “just friends”) Randy gave me a jar of candy hearts carefully arranged with only green, yellow, and orange hearts in sequence. He had purchased an assortment of flavors but painstakingly removed all the flavors I don’t like.

5. Randy originally planned to go into medicine and spent the first two years of college pursuing it. In his tenure in pre-med he worked in the ER and went on a medical service trip to Ecuador where, among other things, he assisted in pulling out rotten teeth.

6. Randy and I had a great time making fun of the people who predicted apocolyptic events for the year 2000. We were so tired of hearing about what might go wrong that he made his own tongue-in-cheek t-shirt to wear on New Years Eve 1999.

7. Randy plays bass guitar in Retroactive, his parents’ band.

8. I sometimes get impatient when trying to learn technical/physical things out of books, so back when I was learning to crochet Randy read my crochet how-to-book and learned it himself so that he could teach me. I think he figured that would be better than listening to me get increasingly frustrated!

9. Randy just got Lasig surgery so he doesn’t need these 7-year-old specs anymore! His procedure was like Extreme Lasig – called PRK – where they chemically dissolve the outer cells of the eye in order to gain access for the laser. I watched the whole thing on a giant TV screen.

10. Randy just started a new job! His boss at his old job likes him so much that when he left the company for a competetor he recruited Randy to come with him. His new job is downtown in the Carew Tower and he loves it – he takes the bus and studies for his G-MAT during the commute. I went to see his office an have lunch with him Tuesday. His cube is spaceous but very bland at the moment. He has two windows – the view is not award-winning, but at least he has a view! What he has gained in veiw, though, he has lost in phone technology. 1988 called and they want their office phone back. Once I got the grand tour of Randy’s work space we went to the top of the tower and looked out at the city – it was a perfect weather day.

And there you have it all (or possibly more than) you ever wanted to know about the best husband a girl could ever have.